I just finished up Gene Logsdon's book, The Contrary Farmer , and I have to admit how impressed I was by it. One might just as well label this book, Cottage Farming for Dummies , so well did it convey ideas and concepts about small-scale farming to this non-farmer who likes to play at gardening. Logsdon, a small-scale farmer with around thirty acres in Ohio, writes passionately not only about what is wrong with our modern, industrial way of farming, but about what it right with modern farming and how we can do it better. In chapter after chapter, he talks about how he and other "contrary farmers" produce livestock, grains, and other things. What is the "contrary farmer", to answer a key question? The contrary farmer is one who spurns the supposedly "correct" idea of how a modern farmer should run his lands. The modern farmer is supposed to buy up as much land as they can by taking out loans, loans to buy $100,000 combines and tractors, who is suppose...
Occasional author. Lover of coffee.